


The Arc of Conflict, Apocrypha 1: All That Which Must Be Undone

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [119]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Background Relationships, Canon Lesbian Character, Conditioning, Depression, Desperation, Empathy, F/F, Gen, Goddesses, Michael Ngcobo is based on concept-art Mercy, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Oasis, Other, Post-Talon, Revenge, Russia, Talon Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Katya Volskaya's government in Russia has destroyed the omnium Koschei, and held their own against the Gods of Oasis. But with Jesse McCree having upset a precarious balance, Lena, Hana, and Sombra have intervened in Russia's rising civil war, and the fragile peace between Overwatch and Oasis has been shattered.In a time that once did happen, there was a crusade of the gods - a campaign of vengeance and of blood, unrelenting, and merciless.But what if it didn't have to happen?What if it could all be... undone?Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflictis a continuance ofThe Arc of Ascension,The Arc of Creation, andThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. To follow the story as it appears,please subscribe to the series.
Relationships: Lena "Tracer" Oxton & Michael Ngcobo (OC), Moira O'Deorain & Lena "Tracer" Oxton
Series: Of Gods and Monsters [119]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024
Comments: 21
Kudos: 34





	The Arc of Conflict, Apocrypha 1: All That Which Must Be Undone

**Author's Note:**

> Words are still on. I have next week's update in a postable state already! ^_^ The one after that, not so much. But then several more which are. So it's a mix.
> 
> dirtyclaws has launched [a public fan-run _Of Gods and Monsters_ discord server](https://discord.gg/pDZMpVT) and invites everyone to come join it!

_[between blinks]_

Tracer sat alone, quiet and dispassionate, in a small lounge at the Ministry, her wives elsewhere, helping keep Russia nailed down - and nailed was essentially the right word.

Blood flowed freely these days on the rainy streets of Moscow.

She'd be with them, but Angela would want another session with Jack, soon. That was fine by her. Angela had lost a wife, but Lena had lost a mother, and so, it was all just fine by her, and so, she waited.

Or maybe, this time... maybe it wasn't. She didn't know why. Why didn't even matter. Nothing really did, not much, not anymore. The world which had been so bright and alive was no longer either, and so, whatever Angela wanted was fine. At least Angela still had motive.

Lena knew this wouldn't have been fine by her before. None of this would've, not ever before. But ever since m... mu... moi...

She still couldn't even think it. Not even now.

A knock, on the doorframe - and she looked up, face still without emotion. Doctor Ngcobo.

Michael Ngcobo didn't approve of any of this, and she didn't blame him. It didn't change what she'd do - what they'd _all_ do - but he'd fought them at every step.

He didn't understand. He couldn't. And so they forgave.

Well.

They forgave _him_ , at least.

"Another session, then?" he asked.

"Yeh," Lena nodded. "Ange and Ree both sleep better after. Usually. Or so they tell me."

"This is monstrous," Michael said. "You know that."

"Yep," she agreed. "But everything's ruined. I tried to fix it, and I couldn't. So now we're gonna keep making the people who did it pay, I guess. It's... all we've got left."

"I've been ruminating on it, Lena. Meditating. You know I have. I've never stopped."

"Yeh. I know. So you're here to go at me about it again." It tried to be a question, but wasn't.

"I am," he answered, regardless. "So is this really the best you can do? The best _we_ can do? Are you really, truly _sure_ of that?"

"No," she replied, honestly. "But what else can we do?"

He stepped through the doorway, over to the coffeemaker, and punched up a hot mocha, two shots.

"Time is your domain," he said as the seconds counted down, hot water steeping into the beans. "It's what you _are._ Can't you fix it? Can't you fix _this?_ "

"How?" Lena demanded. "You always ask, and I always ask how? How could I change this much? I couldn't even save Winston - so how can I change all this?"

"I don't know. But if not the situation, can't we fix what's gone wrong with you? What's gone wrong with... with all of us?"

When Tracer had returned from New Mexico screaming and covered in blood, Sombra - with her intense desire to know everything - had run to her side, and had been swept along. Michael, by contrast, had made a point of keeping his distance - and had held his own.

He still felt it - the rage, the refusal to accept, the necessity to do something, anything, to retaliate. But he'd been able to control it, to hold himself back. The rest had not. Not even Mei-Ling, and not even Sombra, not entirely. Mei-Ling, he didn't fully understand, but it didn't surprise him. Sombra, he suspected, had simply grown too close to Lena to resist.

Lena sighed. "What's gone wrong with all of us is... somethin' that can't be changed either, I don't think."

His mocha ready, he pulled the cup from its holder, and took a sip, tasting it. Hot. Strong. Good. He'd need it.

"But do you _really know?_ "

Lena thought it over for the millionth time, but thought about it harder than she usually did. Michael was talking about what they'd become, of course, but also... how it happened. The moment that had broken everything. She couldn't stop thinking about how to undo it all, going right back to the start, as if some part of her mind was begging, pleading with her, save me from this, save all of us from this.

"I can rewind all I want to. Gods know I've tried. But that doesn't change what happened, 'cause I didn't do it. I'm not the one who planted the bomb, or who set it off, so how could I change what someone else did? How can I change it when I didn't even..."

The speech she'd worked through time and time again wound down, tired even before its end, and she stopped, staring down at the floor. She couldn't even see the point in saying it all again, so she did not.

 _This is different_ , Michael thought. _It is a change. Change is good._ He stepped over and sat beside her in a soft blue chair set as an L against a white table next to the couch on which Lena sat. "Is it that you can't because you can't, or is it that you can't because you've been too angry to think anything else could happen... until now?"

Lena shrugged. Words felt pointless.

"Couldn't you change how you reacted? Knowing what you know now, and where we have gone? Couldn't you rewind, and change _that?_ "

 _...change how... I'd..._ Her brain caught on something.

"Because ask yourself - is this good?" Michael asked. He put his cup aside, on the table, and for the first time since the incident, took her hand. It was a risk, and he knew it, but at this point it felt like it was now or never. "Is this the world any of us wanted?"

"Of course it's not," she whispered, answering Michael's question as well as her own, sensing his emotions better than her own. _I can't... I can't rewind other people, I can't change what they did..._ "But it's only fair. It's what he deserves. Angela deserves her revenge. I do too. Our..."

"I'm not asking if it's _fair_ , or if it's _deserved_ ," he said, leaning in, brushing his hand across her face, gently, a god to a goddess. "I'm not even asking if it's _justice_ , Lena. What I'm asking is... is any of this _right?_ "

 _I didn't do it,_ she thought. _I can't change what they did, I can't change what happened in real time, I can't... But..._

Her memory flashed back to the moments before the explosion, to the moment she teleported, one moment a world fine and right, the next moment a world torn to pieces, suddenly and brutally seared by hell.

 _It's not right,_ she thought, pulling at a twig. _But the world moves as it has, I can't change the world, just what I do..._

"It's not right," she whispered, the words standing in for a sob, finally letting herself admit it in a moment of clarity, or even of catharsis. "It's not right. None of it's right. _I'm_ not right."

"Then _stop doing this_ ," Michael said, not understanding the depth of her words, but still urging her forward as he felt her emotions stir. "We don't have to act this way. We can still..."

"No, doc," Lena whispered, the twig starting to come free. "No. Not as we are. We can't. An' I can't fix it, not here, not me..."

Her eyes grew just a little wet.

"...but maybe, maybe..."

She blinked as she pulled harder on that twig of thought, and it slipped the tiniest bit further forward.

"...maybe _we_ can fix it. Not while in the world - but... while _outside_ it."

Dr. Ngcobo looked confused, but also a little bit hopeful. "What do you mean, Lena? What does that mean?"

The twig of thought burst free, an idea flashing through Lena's mind, one that had been working its way through her subconscious for weeks, one tiny shift at a time, waiting for a moment, perhaps, of stillness, of _help_ , when it could push its way forward just that little bit and be noticed, and grabbed, and pulled forward into her conscious mind.

"Oh doc," she gasped, taking his hand into her own. "You've never stopped pushing me on this, and I think you've been right not to. I think you've..."

She glanced up at him, looking suddenly less unlike herself than she had since her mother died, then back down at the floor, blinking furiously, expression intent, fixed in concentration.

"I think you've given me an idea, doc. A way out. Maybe. It's a long shot, and really dangerous... but maybe... maybe really, really good."

There was little more worrisome than anything a goddess thought of as dangerous. "Lena?" he started to ask, as she barrelled forward.

"If... if I'm wrong, nothing changes," she spoke, her fingers twitching as she felt something other than rage for the first time since Deadlock.

"But if I'm right, you won't remember any of this, and none of us will... except maybe another version of me..."

"What are you thinking?" he asked, urgency in his voice, and maybe a little bit of hope. "Please, Lena. You can tell me."

"I teleported. I teleported right before the bomb went off. Right before the explosion that, nnnnnngh," she shook, and wouldn't say it. "Before. _Right_ before."

"Yes, you've described it many times. But..."

"That means I was in the slipstream, doc. _I_ was in the slipstream." She breathed quickly, shallowly, her skin tingling with the realisation. "You don't know how the slipstream works, and y'really can't, but in a way - I'm still there, _then_. If I can get... if I can get to that _me_ , then I can change what I do... outside of time. I won't be _in_ the world, so I won't have causality to worry about. And that means I won't... and... maybe..."

Lena Oxton looked up, and this time, her head stayed up. "Maybe I can _fix all this._ "

"Uh," Michael said, leaning up, breaking contact, taken a little aback by the pieces he'd not quite started to put together. "Are you sure..."

"Don't care, luv," she said, standing quickly, her gaze desperate, glancing around the room at nothing and at everything. "You've been right all along - _this isn't right._ None of this is right. I don't think any of it was supposed to happen."

She looked directly into Michael's eyes and reached out, her hand briefly caressing his jawline and chin.

"And if I have anything to say about it... it won't."

And with that, she vanished.

\-----

The twice-orphaned Lena Oxton dove back through the slipstream, farther than she'd ever dived before, back those months to the moment of her mother's death - and the tiniest moment before that.

She'd teleported directly over to high-energy physics from the Ministry. She'd demanded - and received, without question, as that's how things worked now - the highest overcharge she'd ever received, and half a dozen extended power packs, hotwired on her orders to give her the energy needed to try what Rada managed to find the courage to tell her simply could not be done.

They told her it would probably destroy her accelerator. She'd be stranded, again. Maybe forever. It might even be enough to kill her. Somehow, they still saw that as a bad thing.

"Don't care, luv," she'd told them. "If I'm right... all this gets undone. All this gets _fixed_. And I'll risk anything to make that happen."

She hadn't asked permission from Angela, or anyone else. She hadn't even told her wives, partly from fear of someone stopping her, and partly because she'd just done it, like she always had. And here in the not-now, in the not-when and not-where of the slipstream, she felt her body dissolving, even within the dissolution which was the nature of the slipstream, an even wider and worse kind of fade than she'd ever felt before.

 _This is too far back_ , she thought, feeling herself thinning away. But she could see herself - her former self - popping in and out in layers, pulses of energy and little more. Every time she touched one, she could get a glimpse of herself, and she tried to tell her previous self, in those moments - _Jesse's here. Jesse has a bomb. It's in the briefcase. He'll kill mum._ \- but she kept existing, and so she knew her future and her past remained unchanged.

The first of the power packs flared, destroyed by power overdraw. A second followed almost immediately. She tried again, and again, and nothing worked, and the alarm she'd never heard outside of a lab sounded, the one that said _return, return, return, or be lost forever_ , and she felt herself moving forward, safety protocols trying to engage - _no no no no NO! I WON'T!_ \- and she triggered the override, and grabbed as hard as she could for the last, brightest teleport, the one with fire and death on one end, and pulled harder than she'd ever done...

...and found herself face to face with herself, her previous self, the last one who had been orphaned only once...

...and then found herself being both selves, both at the same time, one knowing far more but wanting so much _not_ to be what she was...

...and one accelerator failed, dissolving, even as the body which had come with it overlaid on herself, on her then-self, no, her _now_ -self and faded, disappeared, leaving only impossible memories and a moment of gratefulness so deep she had no way - and no _time_ , even here - even to really feel it.

Only-once-orphaned Lena Oxton, suddenly burdened with both unexplainable knowledge and tremendous purpose halted her teleport mid jump, moved a little bit back in time, modified her landing just the tiniest bit - _I've got one chance at this_ , she thought desperately - and, double-jinking, found herself shouting at her mother - her _still alive_ mother - from atop a briefcase this time still closed, this time held down by her weight, and her mother ghosted away, as she was told, and she let Ashe and B.O.B. live, because after all, it was only fair - they'd died too.

And as the future unwrote itself, rewound itself, shaped itself anew, the Lena-that-had-become became unwritten as well, fading to impossible memory, memory made of data received out of band, out of causality, in the slipstream - with only one last, exaltation of thought:

 _It worked_ , she thought. _It **worked**_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the forty-eighth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflict_. To follow the story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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